Well, i just patented the process for patenting the patenting process, so you owe me money from each case you win against someone who submits a patent. also, i patented the process for patenting the process for patenting the patenting process, and patented the process for that process, and just now patented the process for patenting an infinite recursion of processes designed to patent all patent processes.

Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos

manufacturing cigarettes=murder. Tobacco companies are making your precise argument. Why are we granting limited liability status to companies engaged in antisocial, dangerous behaviors? companies gain certain protections in exchange for a degree of oversight from US (as represented by the govt) that they wont engage in socially deleterious behavior. dont make a plant illegal. just take away legal protections for the sale of such products. The day i can personally sue a tobacco manufacture, and they have no legal recourse in corporate law, is the day both progressives and honest libertarians rejoice. same with selling guns to the public, or all other drugs. make them cottage industries with no government protection for the makers, but with heavy personal penalties for shoddy manufacture, etc.

These tropes are all pipe dreams.
Flying cars would cause a traffic nightmare, and would be much more resource intensive than any ground based method. fail.
Personal jet pack: same problem, as we live in a world limited by the laws of physics around maintaining momentum for moving objects (pack wants to stop AND fall). fail.
Robot maid: why would a cybernetic robot with partial AI be used to clean a home, when you could hire someone for 1/1000000000 the cost? by the time such devices are self designing and evolving in a manner similar to biological life, they will be demanding compensation for work and representation in society. fail.
Automated house: while some functions may be nice, such as an automated heating/cooling system, most of it just increases the cost of the home, when we dont need more luxury homes for the rich. (and thats the other argument against all these ideas, they assume that everyone will be a millionaire, or that the poor dont matter when designing tech). fail.
Computer teacher: while AI or the closest we can get will definitely remain with us as an adjunct(sans a herbertian outcome), relying on such a device for teaching children is scary. learning is so much more, and this breaks the cycle of human to human communication that makes us who we fundamentally are.fail.
Underwater city: live under a dome, with the risk of it collapsing every second, and complete destruction? for what? lack of land to live on? if we become so overpopulated that we need to spend thousands of times more money to live underwater, maybe we should reverse, then stabilize our rate of reproduction, both being really cheap methods for solving most of our problems.ps i love the domes on moon cities. domes keep OUT pressure, they dont hold IN pressure. we would need to build the domes the other way around, a ring of supporting metal/stone, an a huge bowl to look out of, with the city below ground level. fail.
Pill food: unless we invent a new type of nutrient which is 10 times more caloric per gram, this cant be done. our bodies are physical objects, which need constant replenishment of mass quantities. easier to reengineer the human to live on fewer resources. plus, no more mouth feel? why not replace sex with an electrode in the brain? fail.
I dont know CowboyNeal, but this sounds like an improvement over the original model, based on comments at s/d. do we really want cyberbot ai's replacing us, a la charles stross? that would be complete fail.

Vegans are wrong. There is no evidence i know of for any traditional societies being vegan. if veganism was so good for people, you would find at least some tribes practicing it. they dont. meat is highly concentrated nutrition, esp. fish and its omega 3's, and is only harmful the way modern people indulge in poor quality sources. no way primitive man harvested flax seeds for the oil. The book "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon gives lots of evidence for the benefits of a diet high in meat, animal fat, and sprouted/fermented foods (free range, organic, bla bla bla always better, and olive/coconut/palm oils over all other veggie oils). The ethical problems with meat are real, though. Animals are semi-sentient, and have feelings just as real as ours. We do not have a right to kill them. but nature didnt consider our feelings about this when letting us evolve. can you imagine if we were obligate carnivores, like cats? to evolve an ethics of meat would be challenging beyond belief. The best i can come up with is a combination of the ethics behind "Should Trees Have Standing", the idea that we are stewards of the earth, and the work of Temple Grandin. Species deserve legal standing in our courts, even more so than "endangered", as should ecosystems. Domesticated animals are now under our stewardship. in exchange for a short but stress free life, we can argue that we can kill them for our needs (requires strict adherence to humane practices). We need to research our humane animal practices to really understand what can help them to avoid suffering (as Grandin does). Vegans are right about factory farming, so they are like hardcore Marxists and other religious nuts. not afraid to point out a social ill (thank you, sincerely), and batshit crazy in their dogmatic application of a narrow, fixed set of ideas to the problem.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikiquote.org%2Fwiki%2FEben_Moglen, great quotes

Atheism is the Null Hypothesis. its only that, a hypothesis, stated more forcefully than agnosticism, which is more of a guideline. we COULD find evidence of a sentient, immensely powerful creator. maybe not the god of the entire universe, but a god of our corner of it. we havent really found it yet (at least by any external, measurable standards). however, most atheists deny the possibility of there being a god, rather than simply stating that all we know about the world can be explained without the presence of the judeochristianislamic deity. For this reason, they may be considered a religion, as they have a dogmatic tenet that cannot be explained logically or supported by evidence/proof of the inability to provide evidence for the contrary. By the way, in the US, the government gets to determine if your belief system qualifies as a religion, so that you can have tax free status for your organization. if that isnt "promoting a religion" i dont know what is. My "religion" is exactly what i say it is, and i dont need the fucking govt giving its imprimatur. IF we believed in our constitution (which we dont) we would have 2 tax structures: nonprofit organizations, and for-profit organizations, based solely on the financial structure of the company, with no consideration for whether or not it, or anyone else, considers it a "religion". for some, their favorite business, or their employer, IS a religion. so what? The truth is, every single person on earth has a set of beliefs and other ideas that classify them in their own private religion of one, as no dogmatic belief system is ever truly believed by anyone in its entirety. (esp. in emphasis on certain aspects of it, we are all unique).

What a great quote to put on a tshirt when entering an airport. I wonder if you could be arrested for wearing the declaration of independence?

That was very nice how he politely got around the fact that boys social development, even under ideal circumstances, is so far behind the average females social development as to barely register as such. Unless we make a supreme effort to work on our social skills, and consciously try to "grow", we are social idiots. Basement/moms house memes have a basis in reality.

What, the IRA? (troll)

You too?

Car choice as an example of the prisoner's dilemma. Which is of course an apt name in this case, as we are prisoners of, and in the automobile.

aw, they were all sucky like that until at least a few years later. check the version histories. no references, etc. the model for WP was the opposite of FEDEX, which began business day one with a complete fleet of trucks, planes, computers, staff, etc, so that the first packages would get there, regardless of the losses incurred for operating on standby that day. I came late to WP, but those sucky articles are probably one reason it didnt become popular until later.

Nature has announced "principles of biology", [https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPrinciples_of_Biology]. I think this one area of publishing is a no brainer for ebooks. I like their model. Of course, this would put a lot of back doctors out of business.

reassuring to us, maybe, but if germs could think, they would be all "wow, 25% of our target population has no clue that they are sitting ducks for our assault. our enemy is doing our work for us. relax, weve won this war before its started!" as a species, we are basically stupider than bacteria on an aggregate scale. we are actively, in a multitude of arenas, destroying ourselves. overpopulation, religious fundamentalism, nuclear power, global warming, gun manufacturing as a major force in politics, just enough science education to harm ourselves, uncontrolled male aggression, uncontrolled female acceptance of male aggression, antibiotics overuse, deforestation, technology that promotes ADD symptoms... well, i could go on much longer. its a sunny day out, ill try to enjoy one more day on earth while i can.

Those are seriously useful tips. of course, i will do some reading first before indiscrimately applying them, but you are probably correct. heat, salt, alcohol, our own immune system: pretty good stuff, not easy for bacteria to evolve defenses against. like cedar oil against insects, the cedar tree has had strong motivation for millions of years to keep bugs away, and it works.